What Victorians Wore: An Overview of Victorian Costume

The first purpose of Clothes . . . was not warmth or decency, but ornament. . . . Warmth he [the primitive human being] found in the toils of the chase; or amid dried leaves, in his hollow tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto: but for Decoration he must have Clothes. — Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Book I, Chapter 5.